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“Kali Hawlk”

Think your marketing ends once a customer sets foot in the store? Believing that your work is done is a big mistake, and one that can cost you more sales.

Most marketing efforts aim to help a prospective buyer understand solutions to a problem, evaluate product or service options, and decide to make a purchase.

The methodology varies between initially buying a consumer’s attention or earning it as part of a strategy to build a larger brand audience. But the goals of each are the same: educate, inform, and persuade buyers to make a purchase.

Point of purchase marketing, however, works a little differently.

This strategy attempts to market to shoppers who are already in the store and ready to make a purchase — and it provides a last-minute way for retailers to influence the details of that decision.

Walk up to any business owner and ask, “How have you been?” or “How’s life?” and there’s a good chance their response will include the word “busy.”

We live in a culture that sees full schedules and workloads as a type of status symbol. The busier you are… well, the better you might be in the eyes of your social circles.

Regardless of whether this is a good or a bad thing, that’s the reality today’s retail entrepreneur needs to face. There’s still only 24 hours in a day — but somehow, you need to fit more in than ever before.

And that means you need be as productive as possible if you want to keep up.

The problem is, you might be attempting to manage your out-of-control to-do lists with actions that kill productivity.

No, this isn’t another listicle of “101 best hacks to supercharge your working hours.” You don’t need that.

What you do need to know about productivity includes the kind of actions that work against you, the most common productivity killers, and what you can do as a retail entrepreneur to get just a little more done each day. So, here’s how you can identify the drains on your day.

Social media provides a great space online to be, well, social. That should be obvious, but too many retailers use their social media accounts as platforms from which to shout about their products to the virtual rooftops.

The problem with this approach? It’s not effective.

And we know this offline. We’ve all been to a networking event or a party and run into that one person who just does not stop talking. Their favorite subject? Themselves.

This behavior is just as annoying and unappealing online as it is in person. Yet retailers continue to use social only to talk, talk, talk about their products, events, and sales.

There is a different way, and it’s much more effective.

It’s a strategy where, yes, you share a little bit about your brand and what you offer — but you also spend a lot of time interacting and engaging with your customers, followers, colleagues, and other important individuals who follow you.

To practice this approach, retailers must first quiet down their own digital voices and practice social listening skills instead.

The success of your business depends on your ability to train the people who work for you.

Without proper guidance and education, your retail employees can’t perform at the level you expect. You must communicate effectively, and it’s your responsibility to ensure they fully understand your expectations and their role in your shop.

That’s not always easy. Staff training requires a lot of effort and consideration — both before you actually hire anyone and through a new hire’s first few months.

Not only do you need to educate this new employee, but you need to do so in a way that they can understand and digest all the information flowing their way. You also need to provide guidelines and feedback in a way they can act on your suggestions and know how to make great judgment calls when the situation requires it.

It’s overwhelming because training isn’t just a one-time task with a set timeframe. Great staff training programs are complex systems with a lot of moving parts — and many offer ongoing learning initiatives.

To help you overcome some of the challenges in piecing that system together for yourself, we talked to a number of experts, business owners, and retailers to get their tried and true best practices for staff training.

Are you missing opportunities to increase sales and generate more revenue?

If you’re not upselling your customers, the answer is yes.

But here’s the tricky part: people don’t enjoy being sold. Pushing more products and services onto a customer who already committed to buying something from you can backfire and leave them feeling bullied, unappreciated, and downright annoyed.

The art of the upsell means taking a sale from a transaction to an interaction, from a conversion to a connection.

Doing so makes a big difference. It dramatically impacts your customer’s experience. Adding on to their original purchase becomes their decision rather than a pushy upsell.

So how do you strike a balance between making no additional offer and driving customers away with overly aggressive sales tactics? How can you encourage an upsell without being overbearing?

By using strategies that provide more value, give the customer more benefit, and create a better overall experience. Your sales can actually make customers happier and feel more connected to your company and brand.

The idea of giving away your product for free can feel a little daunting. After all, someone has to pay for that — and when it comes to free samples, you eat the cost.

But don’t let that dissuade you, because free samples can generate a lot of sales for you over time. In some cases, free samples can boost sales by as much as 2,000%.

You can use free samples to:

Introduce your product to new audiences unfamiliar with your brand.

Foster relationships and inspire loyalty with existing customers.

Expand shoppers’ knowledge about the products you offer.

Encourage repeat customers and more sales of new products.

Earn attention for your brand at or leading up to an event.

Those are all great outcomes for your business (and your revenues). Still, they require your initial investment: you need to pony up the product samples.

Before you double down and start giving everything away, it may help to understand why freebies hook customers. And more importantly, you might want to know how giving your product out for free leads to paying customers.

We set out to understand the science behind the power of free samples — and how they can lead to sales for retailers.

You need to market your business to continue growing. But you need to grow and generate more revenue before you invest in marketing.

Sound familiar? You may feel trapped in this catch-22 and for good reason: traditional marketing avenues are expensive. And it’s hard to pour any amount of profit into something where return on investment is notoriously hard to track and understand.

Thankfully, there is an escape. You can explore marketing channels that don’t require a huge budget — or any marketing budget at all. New ways of promoting your products and sharing your business with new audiences make it easy to market for cheap or even free.

Get started by using these strategies that incorporate everything from one-on-one connections to massive reach on social media and more.

Customer relations and service depend heavily on what retailers communicate to the people who buy their products. And ways, methods, and channels of communication have radically changed in recent years.

As a result, the relationship between a business and its customers doesn’t look the same today as it did even 10 years ago. That means the way you deliver your customer service shouldn’t look the same today as it did in the past, either.

Serving your customers in unique, fresh ways can boost brand loyalty and encourage new, inquisitive customers to experience what you offer for themselves. It can become part of your differentiator, setting you apart from your competitors.

In the digital age, good customer service can even go viral, spreading your message far beyond your normal audience. Taking good care of consumers can even double as effective marketing for your retail store, whether you use it in a campaign or it turns into excellent PR fodder for media to run with.

Not sure how to get started? Take some customer service tips from these seven retailers who embrace new ways to do business — and serve the people who help their companies make profits.

Whatever you thought of Snapchat when it first debuted, you can’t deny that little white ghost icon is just about everywhere today. The app proved that it was more than just a social network for kids and teenagers to send silly messages to each other that quickly disappeared.

Photos, videos, and text shared on Snapchat maintains a short shelf life, so it’s understandable why that could add to your list of reasons why you haven’t gotten on board with this social app yet. Why go to the trouble of creating great content when you’re limited to 10 seconds of airtime per snap — which is just gone after 24 hours?

While the features of Snapchat remain the same, its user base has changed dramatically since it launched. It also provides unique, fun, and highly engaging ways to share content — and therefore, your products and your brand — with potential customers.

If you wrote off the app before, it might be time to take another look at Snapchat and how to use it as a retail business. We talked to a handful of experts who offered their tips and takeaways on using this platform to its maximum potential.

Many retailers put a lot of their time, focus, and resources into finding ways to generate more sales.

After all, more sales means more revenues. And more revenues provide more opportunity for future business growth.

But what about the actual process for making those sales? What about the transaction itself?

While it’s important to drive new customers to purchase products (and keep existing customers loyal and coming back again and again), retailers can’t neglect the systems and processes that physically allow for sales to happen.

This is where the right POS, or point-of-sale, comes into play. The best POS systems allow you to not only actually conduct sales transactions, but also handle a number of other activities around that sale from inventory management to returns and exchanges to tracking customer behavior.

With so many solutions available to retailers, finding the best and the right POS for your business can feel challenging. And that’s why we put together this step-by-step guide that will take you through the entire process, from research to testing to decision-making.

Ready to get started? First, you need to follow a bit of timeless advice: know thyself. (Or, in this case, your business and how you sell).